James Newton Howard (born June 9, 1951) is an American composer best known for his scores to motion pictures. He is one of the most popular and respected composers for cinema, and has scored over 100 films. The recipient of eight Academy Award nominations, some of Howard's best known film scores include Pretty Woman (1990), The Prince of Tides (1991), The Fugitive (1993), Dinosaur (2000), The Village (2004), King Kong (2005), Batman Begins (2005) (with Hans Zimmer), I Am Legend (2007) The Dark Knight (2008) (also with Zimmer), and, most recently Green Lantern (2011), The Hunger Games (2012), Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), The Bourne Legacy (2012) and Catching Fire (2013). He is known for his frequent collaborations with director M. Night Shyamalan, having scored all his films since The Sixth Sense (1999). Howard also has a reputation of being a fast composer, due to his work on movies such as King Kong and The Hunger Games, both of which were composed in approximately one month.

Early life and career

Howard was born in Los Angeles, California. He came from a musical family; his grandmother was the Pittsburgh Symphony's concertmaster and violinist during the 1930s and '40s.

Howard began studying music as a child, taking classical piano lessons at the age of four. He went on to attend the Thacher School in Ojai, California, and the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California. He then attended the University of Southern California, studying at the USC School of Music as a piano performance major, but dropped out after 6 weeks because "He wanted to do other things than practicing the piano". He also studied at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California, with Reginald Stewart and Leon Fleischer, and furthered his studies with the orchestrator Marty Paich, who would later conduct some of Newton-Howard's scores.

After Howard left college, he joined a short-lived rock band, then worked for a couple of years as a session musician with artists including Diana Ross, Ringo Starr, and Harry Nilsson. In the early 70s, Howard described himself as being "dirt poor" until his big break which came in 1975 after his manager got him an audition with Elton John. In 1975 joined Elton John's band and Howard toured with them, playing the role of their keyboardist during the late 1970s and early 1980s. He was part of the band that played behind John in Central Park, New York, on September 13, 1980. True to his intentions of doing more than just playing the piano, Howard also arranged strings for several of Elton's songs during this period including on the hits "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" and "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word", as well as playing additional keyboards and synthesizers on several of Elton's studio albums, including Rock of the Westies (1975), Blue Moves (1976), 21 at 33 (1980), and The Fox (1981).

In 1982, Howard was featured on Toto IV as the strings conductor and orchestrator for "I Won't Hold You Back," "Afraid Of Love," and "Lovers In The Night". A year later, he released the live album James Newton Howard and Friends, which featured Toto's David Paich (keyboards), Steve Porcaro (keyboards), Jeff Porcaro (drums) and Joe Porcaro (percussion).

In 1983, Howard was co-producer, musician (keyboards) and orchestrator in Riccardo Cocciante's album Sincerità.

After briefly touring with Crosby, Stills and Nash, based on the skills he had gathered in music orchestration, Howard took an opportunity brought to him by his manager to write a film score for a small-time movie. This career move he made in the mid-1980s would lead to his path to becoming a famous film music composer. Throughout his career as a composer/musician/songwriter, he has scored films of all scales and genres, earning multiple award nominations for his work.

Amidst his early start in film music, Howard did not entirely abandon his previous musical path and did return for a brief collaboration with Elton John on his Tour De Force of Australia in the fall of 1986. Howard conducted both his own and Paul Buckmaster's arrangements during the second half of the set, which focused on orchestrated performances of selected songs from John's catalog.

When deliving into his family history, twenty-five years after the death of his father, Howard learned that his father's family was Jewish (Howard later became a practicing Reconstructionist Jew).

1990s

Howard scored the surprise blockbuster romantic comedy Pretty Woman (1990) and received his first Academy Award nomination for his score for Barbra Streisand's drama The Prince of Tides (1991). Setting the musical mood for numerous films throughout the decade, Howard's skills encompassed a plethora of genres, including four more best original score Oscar nominations, for the Harrison Ford action feature The Fugitive (1993), the Julia Roberts romantic comedy My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), M. Night Shyamalan's The Village (2004), and most recently, Michael Clayton (2007). In addition, Howard scored the Western epic Wyatt Earp (1994), Kevin Costner's Waterworld (1995), and Primal Fear (1996). His collaborations on tunes for One Fine Day (1996) and Junior (1994) garnered Best Song nods. Along with scoring such smaller, character-driven films as Five Corners (1988), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), and American Heart (1993), Howard proved equally skilled at composing for big-budget Hollywood spectacles, including Space Jam (1996), Dante's Peak (1997) (theme only - score was composed by John Frizzell), and Collateral (2004). He has also scored three Disney feature films which are Dinosaur (2000), Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) and Treasure Planet (2002). Though he concentrated primarily on films, Howard has also contributed music for TV series, earning an Emmy nomination in 1995 for his theme to NBC's ratings smash ER (Howard also scored the two-hour pilot); he also provided the themes for The Sentinel and Gideon's Crossing, winning an Emmy for the latter.

He has scored all of Shyamalan's suspense thrillers, The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000), Signs (2002), The Village (2004), Lady in the Water (2006), The Happening (2008), and The Last Airbender (2010), notably dropping the intense, yet subtle, opening credit music for The Sixth Sense from the corresponding soundtrack album.

2000s

Howard is now one of the most recognized composers for film. On October 14, 2005, it was officially announced that James Newton Howard would replace Howard Shore as composer for King Kong, due to "differing creative aspirations for the score" between Shore and director Peter Jackson. The resultant score earned Howard his first Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Score. His work on Michael Clayton earned him an Oscar nomination. He followed in 2008 with his eighth Oscar nomination for Edward Zwick's Defiance. He also collaborated with Hans Zimmer on the scores for Batman Begins and its record-breaking sequel The Dark Knight.

Some of his most recent works are The Happening, his sixth film with M. Night Shyamalan, Blood Diamond, Michael Clayton, The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, I Am Legend, Charlie Wilson's War, and the M. Night Shyamalan film adaptation of the Nickelodeon series Avatar: the Last Airbender. Additionally, in a radio interview from early 2008, Howard revealed that he would collaborate with Terrence Malick "in about a year", a project likely to be the director's upcoming Tree of Life. However, it was later announced that Alexandre Desplat would provide the score.

Howard debuted his work for symphony orchestra, I Would Plant A Tree, in February 2009 as part of the Pacific Symphony's annual American Composers Festival. The debut took place at the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa, California, with the Symphony under the direction of Carl St.Clair.

In 2009, he was awarded a Grammy along with Hans Zimmer for the soundtrack to The Dark Knight.

After being replaced in later seasons, his original theme song for the hit TV show ER returned for the final episode of the series.

In September 2010, he was appointed visiting professor of media composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Discography and filmography

Year

Title

Notes

1974

James Newton Howard

1982

Toto IV

Conductor/Orchestrator(Strings) for I Won't Hold You Back,Afraid Of Love, and Lovers In The Night.